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Workers Rights and Jobs

Argentines March With Workers Against Macri’s Pro-Business Policies

December 23, 2015 Staff, www.telesurtv.net , , ,
By Staff of Tele Sur - Argentines hit the streets on Tuesday in the first mass mobilization against Macri’s fiscal adjustment plan. Thousands of Argentines from various leftist groups gathered at the Plaza de Mayo on Tuesday to decry the fiscal and labor policies of the newly instated President Mauricio Macri, which they view as gains for the “CEOcracy” at the expense of workers. The action, ending at the presidential palace, was the first unified march against Macri’s adjustment program.

‘Uber Economy,’ Naked Capitalism Screwing American Workers

December 23, 2015 Steven Hill, www.kirkusreviews.com ,
By Steven Hill for Kirkus - Despite the massive wealth and innovation flourishing throughout Silicon Valley, there’s also a major downside, writes the author. It lies in the premise of a “sharing economy,” in which participating businesses actively repurpose or outsource formerly full-time positions with project-to-project freelancers and independent contractors who earn reduced salaries with little or no benefits packages. Hill argues that this trend has irreparably damaged the American workforce, making it increasingly impermanent, disposable, and transient. The author writes of personally experiencing this trend himself after being laid off from full-time employment and then having to pay exorbitant health care premiums and payroll tax payments as a freelance writer.

Global Unions Demand Release Of Chinese Labour Activists

December 23, 2015 Staff, www.industriall-union.org , , ,
By Staff of IndustrALL - IndustriALL has written to President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China, protesting against the crackdown against labour activists. On 21 December, IndustriALL and IUF delivered a message to the Chinese mission in Geneva, Switzerland, on behalf of the global unions and ITUC. At least four labour NGOs have been targeted by the Chinese authorities since 3 December 2015 in a crackdown in the southern province of Guangdong. 25 NGO staff and volunteers have been detained and questioned by police. One of the accusations was “assembling crowds to disturb public order”.

When Workers Become Owners: Taking Co-Op Movement To Next Level

December 23, 2015 Brian Van Slyke, www.truth-out.org ,
By Brian Van Slyke for Truthout - There's a revolution taking place in the US workforce - but you may not have heard about it. Around the country, workers are starting businesses that they democratically control and that financially benefit them. These businesses, called worker cooperatives, are owned and governed by the employees. Every worker is a member of the co-op, which gives them one share and one vote in the company's operations. Worker cooperatives come in all shapes and sizes. Equal Exchange, a distributor of fair trade chocolate and coffee, has over 100 worker-owners, with a board of directors and co-executive directors, all ultimately accountable to the employees.

South Korean Workers Fight Conservative Government

December 17, 2015 Yola Kipcak, www.marxist.com ,
By Yola Kipcak for In Defense of Marxism - In the aftermath of the largest demonstration so far on 14 November, the leader of the radical Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), Han Sang-gyun, has been arrested by 2000 police officers surrounding the Buddhist temple where he had been hiding since 16 November. Their offices have been raided and another 14 trade unionists have been arrested as well. Despite the government’s attempts to ban the follow-up demonstration on 5 December, another 30,000 took to the streets to oppose their actions.

The Kohler Tradition

December 17, 2015 Joel Feingold, www.jacobinmag.com ,
By Joel Feingold for Jacobin Magazine - On a Sunday night late last month, the third-shift picket lines at the gates of the colossal Kohler plantwere jammed with Tier B workers — cracking jokes, getting to know one another outside the heat of the foundry, off the assembly line. It was the night shift, something like midnight. The line that night was young and international. Women and men. Third-generation German-American Kohler workers joined by Hmong-American, Latino, and black fellow workers. At their side were young migrants from southern Wisconsin and upstate New York, and many other small and large places.

It’s Time To Take A Stand For Workers On TPP

December 8, 2015 James P. Hoffa, Leo W. Gerard and Dennis Williams, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
By James P. Hoffa, Leo W. Gerard and Dennis Williams for The Huffington Post - We serve as representatives of American organized workers on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN) and together have stated that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a bum deal we cannot support. By registering our dissent to the ACTPN report that endorses the agreement, the Teamsters, the United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers are letting Congress and the public know this deal fails everyday Americans and must be rejected by our elected representatives. The TPP is simply the latest in a long line of terrible trade pacts that ship jobs overseas and lower wages at home. At a time of outrageous economic inequality and stagnate wages, TPP is the last thing we should do.

CUNY Faculty Authorizes A Strike Vote

December 1, 2015 Carlos Ballesteros, www.thenation.com , ,
By Carlos Ballesteros for The Nation - The Professional Staff Congress—the labor union that represents more than 25,000 faculty and staff across the City University of New York’s 24 campuses—has had a busy November. In the course of three weeks, the union has organized a coordinated act of civil disobedience, taken the first step towards calling for a strike, and helped deliver more than 40,000 postcards to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office. And for good reason: Members of the PSC have worked without a contract for five years and have gone without a pay raise for six. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo has consistently divested state funds from the University, forcing students to foot an increasing share of costs like utility bills and rent.

How Walmart Keeps An Eye On Its Massive Workforce

November 30, 2015 Susan Berfield, www.bloomberg.com , ,
By Susan Berfield for Bloomberg Businessweek - In the autumn of 2012, when Walmart first heard about the possibility of a strike on Black Friday, executives mobilized with the efficiency that had built a retail empire. Walmart has a system for almost everything: When there’s an emergency or a big event, it creates a Delta team. The one formed that September included representatives from global security, labor relations, and media relations. For Walmart, the stakes were enormous. The billions in sales typical of a Walmart Black Friday were threatened. The company’s public image, especially in big cities where its power and size were controversial, could be harmed.

National Black Women’s Economic Plan Would Better All Workers’ Rights

November 26, 2015 Chaumtoli Huq, www.lawatthemargins.com ,
By Chaumtoli Huq for Law At The Margins - In all measures, including health, education, and economic security, black women in the United States fare worse than other women, as detailed by the Center for American Progress. Black women earn 63 cents on the dollar in comparison to the 79 cents for white women as revealed by a study by the American Association of University Women. Linda Burnham, National Research Director of National Domestic Workers Alliance, in Gender and Black Jobs Crisis, has written that this pay gap can be attributed to the over representation of black women in low wage jobs such a health care, fast food and retail sales: often concentrated at double or triple the rate of their share of the workforce.

National Union Of Healthcare Workers Wins Battle With Kaiser

November 25, 2015 Cal Winslow, www.labor4sustainability.org
By Cal Winslow for Counter Punch - The therapists, counselors, and social workers at Kaiser Permanente in California have won a magnificent victory. In a last minute retreat, in the face of an open-ended strike, Kaiser, the giant California health care corporation, settled with 1400 workers and their union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). The therapists’ victory is a landmark, in healthcare and above all in mental healthcare. The bottom line: these workers have won patient care ratios, they’ve won the right to advocate for patients, and they won these in a context of a nationwide drive to cut costs and press productivity in an industry awash in cash.

100 Years Later: 5 Timeless Lessons From Joe Hill

November 21, 2015 Nadine Bloch, www.wagingnonviolence.org
By Nadine Bloch for Waging Nonviolence - A hundred years ago on November 19, 1915, the song writin’, cartoon scribblin’, parody pushin’ Industrial Workers of the World organizer Joe Hill was unceremoniously executed by firing squad in Utah. Ah, but you might say, the only thing I know about him is that “Joe Hill ain’t never died,” quoting the words of a popular folk song. While it is true that not many folks outside of the embattled labor movement and associated circles know much about Joe Hill these days — that’s a crying shame. Joe Hill’s struggles for worker’s rights, free speech, the right to a fair trial, and against the inequality of our economic order are still significant today.

One Year From Election, Fast-Food Workers Wage Biggest-Ever Strike

November 10, 2015 Jack Temple, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
By Giovanna Vitale and Jack Temple for Fight for $15 - Fast-food workers will wage their biggest-ever strike Tuesday – one year from Election Day – with walkouts hitting a record 270 cities from Detroit to Denver. The strikes will culminate in protests in 500 cities, where fast-food, home care, child care, and other underpaid workers will amass outside city halls—local symbols of political power— to demand that elected leaders nationwide stand up for $15/hr and union rights. The strikes and protests come as underpaid workers nationwide vow to take their Fight for $15 and union rights to the ballot box in 2016 to show candidates of all political stripes that the nearly 64 million Americans paid less than $15 are a voting bloc that can no longer be ignored. In addition to the strikes and city hall protests, auto parts workers, farmworkers, grocery clerks, FedEx drivers, nursing home workers and others will show their support for the Fight for $15 at rallies planned for 1,000 cities across the country, sending a message to candidates that higher pay and union rights are urgent issues for our country that need to be addressed now.

Dozens Of CUNY Faculty And Students Arrested In Labor Protest

November 6, 2015 Noah Hurowitz, www.dnainfo.com , , ,
By Noah Hurowitz for DNA Info - MURRAY HILL — About 50 CUNY faculty and staff members were arrested Wednesday after blockading the entrance to a CUNY administrative building in protest of going five years without a contract, according to organizers and police. Protesters wearing black T-shirts with the words “Five Years without a Contract Hurts CUNY Students,” were seen being handcuffed and led from the front of 205 E. 42nd St. Wednesday evening, video showed. “Tax the rich, not the poor, stop the war on CUNY,” protesters were heard chanting while blocking the entrance to the building, which houses the system’s human resources and administrative offices.

When Bank Workers Occupy the Banks

October 30, 2015 Michelle Chen, www.thenation.com , ,
By Michelle Chen for The Nation - After about eight years of seeing Main Street households get owned by Big Finance, front-line bank workers are now trying to reclaim Wall Street, branch by branch. In Los Angeles, where communities are still reeling from the financial crisis, front-line bank employees, and activists last week occupied the lobbies of Wells Fargo and Bank of America and demanded fair terms for the customers and the workforce. As we’ve reported previously, bank workers have been organizing to demand more equitable banking practices for those buying and selling some of the most lucrative financial products at the community level.
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